This weekend's video treat is a song by Charm City Suicides called "Heroin Sucks." This was shot by me around 2003 in Bethel, CT, at my friend Tom's house. Terribly, I missed the beginning of the song, and then right before the end, my tape ran out. But you'll get the idea.

I don't know how we got hooked up with this Baltimore band (though I'm sure Brian could tell me), but I'll never forget seeing them for the first time at Newtown Teen Center. The singer suddenly became this possessed beast, yelling at...something...like he was a commander in the middle of a fierce battle. Then his band launched into their assault, and soon the guy was flipping around like a fish out of water on the pool table, which wasn't even that close to the stage area. Before anybody knew what hit them, the dude ran out the back door, signifying the end of the experience. People talk about times when bands leave them stunned, jaw on floor. This was that time for me.

The "beast," Mike Apichella, turned out to be one of the friendliest, most genuine people I met in my time playing in bands (which I hope isn't over!). I saw CCS a few more times, including their last show, which I have some nice photos of. And Mike helped out our band, The Pac-Men, when our tour went through Baltimore. In an incredible coincidence, before going to sleep at his parents' house that night, I noticed my childhood stuffed animal and best friend, Munk-a-dunk. Only it wasn't my Munk-a-dunk, it was the same stuffed monkey--his parents must've grabbed the same model mine did back in the 70s.

Mike has been doing his "new" "band," Human Host, for over six years now. Here's an interview I just found about that.

1:14: Goddamn it. Bay's fly ball to the wall with the tying run on ends it. 5-4. These last few losses have not happened. They are a dream and I'm hoping to wake up. Pukebarf. Dogpatch. Pukedogbarfpatch.

12:29: We've blown our second 4-0 lead against an old rookie of this roadtrip. 5-4 them, 7th inning stretch.

12:05: Ichiro hit a dong earlier, so 4-1, Lester still in there, bottom 6.

11:09: Lugo tries to hit into a rally-killing DP, but the throw to first is low, and two runs score. 4-0 SOX after 2.5.

11:00: Ellsbury is sparking the hell out of us, with key extra-base hits in the first and second innings. Sox 2, Seattle 0. Yanks won when Joe Nathan couldn't hold a TWO run lead in the ninth. They also topped themselves cheapness-wise tonight when Gardner actually hit a *bloop* inside-the-park home run.

So, you know how teams copy us all the time now? This weekend in Anaheim I heard they had a kid say "play ball" before the game. That's our thing--every game. Tonight before this game in Seattle, a kid saying "play ball"....Well, I'm sure Dr. Charles got that from somewhere...

1. Keep watchin' those Mets tix. They keep running out, adding more, running out, adding more, etc. Still mainly singles, but some multiples in the 75-dollar zone. They also added upper level SRO for the Toronto series, which is the next home series, right before the Mets come in.

2. Reminder to Connecticut people: Sunday, channel 30, me and my mom on the news, during the sports report. I don't know the time. Check the 5, 6, and/or 11. That's all I can tell ya.

3. In case you missed it last weekend, I discovered that the Phillies had already finished first in our contest a few days earlier. Lee, please e-mail me. You won. I hope Lee didn't disappear forever like the winner of last year's Manny's 500th HR contest. But second place is still up for grabs. The Royals just need one more total, and eight teams need just two.

7:45: single, sac bunt, single wins it for them. We leave 17 men on base...

7:38: Bases loaded, one out, Pedroia Ks, and Papi grounds out to the catcher. We go bottom 12. Pedroia HAS to hit a fly ball there!

7:12: Papelbon leaves second and third, we go to the 12th!

7:00: We go to the bottom of the eleventh. Ramirez has been great for us, getting all six men he's faced in the ninth and tenth.

6:37: We go extras.

6:31: We had two on, one out in top 9, but strand them. Tied at 4, going bottom 9.

6:19: After a one-out triple, Ram-Ram gets Hunter to pop to shallow right. Drew makes the catch, and amazingly, Abreu tries to tag and score. Drew guns him out easily. 4-4, going to the ninth.

6:08: A two-out rally--we tie it on Pedroia's hit in the eighth.

5:57: Sac fly makes it 4-3 them after 7.

5:44: Stretch time in Anaheim. 3-3.

4:48: Ellsbury single ties it. All six runs in the game have come with two outs.

4:37: Penny puts the first two guys on, gets the next two, and then gives up a two-run double. 3-2 Angels, end third.

4:22: Bay groundout makes it 2-1 SOX in the 3rd.

Lugo knocked in a run, it's 1-1 in the third. Penny has looked pretty good through 2.

They just put the little Ts next to the Mets series. Looks like singles, and expensive seats together. For now.

Friday.
Saturday.
Sunday.

Also, singles for the June Texas weekend series. They had taken down ALL summer weekend Ts from the sked, but this proves they'll be putting them back up before each homestand.

We all know about the empty seats at Yankee Stadium. But one thing no one has brought up is the fact that the Yanks had to offer tickets at extremely discounted prices just to get into the old park. That makes this year's prices even more expensive from last year's. I brought this up here a lot last year, as I'd often get the e-mails from the team telling me that all their tickets up to a certain price point were available to some games for $5. Even $48 seats. Almost a 90% discount.

Maybe they should have taken this into consideration when upping the prices. It's hard to believe they were dumb enough to think, Okay, we drew this many fans last year, they'll all just have to pay a little more...., conveniently forgetting that many of them were all but given a free ticket in previous seasons.

They are doing the $5 games this year, too, but only a handful of them--and of course, those tickets have all been bought up and placed on the secondary sites for much higher than that, while MLB stands by, happily partnered with these sites instead of stamping them out.

12:37: We anti-win, 8-4. After a rough start, Palmer went the distance, retiring the final 1,000 Red Sox.

11:56: Daniel Bard made his debut and did really well--but we're still down 8-4. About this shift teams are putting on Drew: Hey Drew, doesn't this prove to you that you should've been hitting to the opposite field all along? Especially at Fenway? Come on, get your head out of your ass. If you don't do it now, every ball you hit will be an out. Dope.

11:34: 7-4 after 5. Oy. We have time, though.

10:58: We score four early, but now Tim has given two back. 4-2 in the third. Yanks won...but at least that means we can we can take first place tonight. But now we trail 5-4 as Napoli hits a 3-run dong.

Sox at Angels, 10 of the clock. Then an afternoon game tomorrow.

I did a nerdy post on Baseball Digest. Click here.

Pettitte walked thre in the first, but the Jays only scored one, and then gave up 5 in the second. 5-1 Yanks in the 3rd.

My friend Bruce sent me this 1984 video of a bar near Wrigley Field that showed Cubs games in the afternoons and held punk shows at night.

And my friend Pat sent me this link to some pretty ridiculous "gumball" style hats. THe Orioles one is the best...

Buchholz pitched eight innings of shutout ball, striking out 11 and walking none for Pawtucket this morning.

1:29: Papelbon gets the save. We win 4-3. Scioscia pissed again.

!:!!: Sox take the lead in the ninth on Tek's double, scoring Drew from first!

12:43: Papi HBP knocks in one, Bay groundout ties it! 3-3, mid eighth.

12:34: Lowell kind of nonchalanted a grounder by Figgins and he came around to score to make it 3-1 them. But we have loaded the bases with one out in the eighth, with Papi up....

11:34: More Aramark vendors, more numbers on their backs (in the crowd at Anaheim). i have written to the company to request more info. In the meantime, the other AL teams they're partnered with are: Mariners, Royals, Twins, Orioles, A's, Jays. So we'll watch to see if they have the numbers. The Phillies and Angels vendors seem to have that team's font for their numbers--the Fenway vendors have generic black numbers. 2-1 Angels in the 5th--Masterson is putting a lot of guys on, not a lot of control.

10:40: Crazy comeback win for the Celtics, so again we've got two other Boston teams winning playoff games with the Red Sox the last team to finish up. Drew's dong makes it 1-1 in the second. Youk to DL...

9:32: Yanks lose, Halladay complete game, 103 pitches, under 2.5 hours.

9:09: Peter Abrams: "The Rogers Centre fans are chanting “steroids” at Alex and a fan just threw a foul ball he hit back on the field." Yanks trail 4-1, down to their final three outs.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Weaver to spin the wheel of fish against Masterson and the Sox in Anaheim in an hour and a half. I will do some updates in this post.

Yanks at Toronto going on now--Halladay up 3-0 against Burnett in the sixth. Jeter's out of the lineup with a sore oblique. Matsui left this game with a tight hamstring. And I guess Phil Coke is out, too. The bad luck continues for them. The laughter for me.

Is UPI writing its articles on a Newton?

Allan Wood pointed out that their game story from Sunday's Red Sox win credited "Pedro Martinez" as the winner of the game. (It was really Ramon Ramirez, as Pedro Martinez hasn't pitched for Boston in quite some time.) I checked out the rest of the article and found that Brian Shouse was referred to as "Brad Shouse" and Jason Bartlett as "Jason Barrett."

Okay....

I picked another game story of theirs, first one I saw, and checked that out. Ronnie Belliard is "Robbie." Daniel Cabrera is "Cabera." Josh Willingham? "John."

UPI's slogan? "100 Years of Journalistic Excellence." Considering they started in 1907, I guess the excellence has run out.

Roger Clemens breaks his silence on steroids...and continues to deny, deny, deny. He has done a masterful job of convincing the world. The "world" to him, of course, has a population of one, and all one of those people believe him.

More on my channel 30 interview:

In comments, Peter asked me if I met any of the channel 30 personalities, such as news anchor (and Sox fan) Gerry Brooks. While my mom and I were waiting to be interviewed, we were actually talking about Brooks. A few minutes later, he appeared, coming in from outside. I was facing the door with my Red Sox jersey on, and Brooks focuses right in on it and with a grin says, "I like it," and walked on through.

He was the only celeb I saw there that I recognized from my CT days. Except for Kevin Nathan, the sports guy, who interviewed us. Kevin was great, and really knew how to give an interview. Especially since there were two of us--he went back and forth, giving specific questions to each of us.

I thought there'd be a person putting make-up on my face and stuff but it wasn't like that. Kevin even told me it was okay to wear my Sox hat, which I had assumed was forbidden under the TV lights. I got to see an anchorwoman do one of those "here's some stories we're working on" promos, which was pretty cool. Oh, and when I went into the bathroom, I was surprised to see that it was almost like a dressing room, with a huge mirror with lights above it. I guess I just thought there was a whole separate area for that stuff. But WVIT is moving into a new, modern, bigger building which is standing right behind the existing one. Looks like it's going to be a lot nicer than what they're in now, which seems to be a converted 1950s elementary school. But everyone was really nice and we had a great time, and the interview went as well as we could have expected. Thanks again to Kevin Nathan.

If you're in Connecticut, check me out on channel 30 tonight on the 11:00 news. The interview aired at 6:00, too, and I heard it came out great. It will also be on next Sunday--I'll give you better warning leading up to that--today I was in NYC all day with Kim.

When my mom and I were there for the interview, I told Kevin Nathan how the only Sox games I saw growing up were pretty much the Friday and Sunday games on channel 30. I'm happy to report that he said he's amazed by how many people associate his channel with Red Sox games, even though it's been decades since they've shown any.

If you saw me on TV tonight and are coming here for the first time, welcome. Hope you like awesomeness. You can buy our book at pretty much any bookstore in New England, or on any of the online booksellers. Get it here on Amazon.

I really wanted that series win and we got it. Papi with a key double, helped out by the fans going nuts for him, and Bay with more of his usual--knocking in the go-ahead run late. And Pap gets out of a two on, none out jam. He struck out Carl Crawford--despite Joe Morgan's insistence that he wants to pitch around him and face the best hitter in the league, Longoria, with the bases loaded and a one-run lead in the ninth.

Great moment when Burrell flinched as the crowd cheered Big Baby's Buzzer Beater.

Did you see Wally's mom?

Great seats available for next home series. But first we take our final west coast trip of the year. Late games--woohoo! (Dear average person, that wasn't sarcastic, I love watching games deep into the night when everybody's asleep. Remember, the early bird misses all the late-night fun.)

Did you see Aubrey-ana Huff-ington mocking Joba's fist pump? Very nice. And on meth-er's day to boot, haha. By the way, their game should've been called "Orioles Fan 101," as it would be a great intro to what it's like to be an O's fan. They should've scored so many more runs in that game. But apparently Adam Jones has yet to master sliding. And the Yanks get two infield singles with two outs and get a homer to give them the lead. O's fans, you deserve better. Good times are on the horizon...small as they may appear right now. I also discovered that Providence has an AM station that carries Yanks games. Terrible job, but hey, at least I can flip them on if I only have a radio (that doesn't get 880--my car does, almost as if it was so used to the Tri-State that it still picks up the NY stations blindfolded.) Anyway, there was a local ad for a pizza place during the game that mocked the "evil empire." Nice!

I just noticed that the Mariners were the only team not to have scored 4 runs in a game. I thought that was odd, so I double-checked, and found a 4. From April 21st. Now, I had worried that maybe I missed a few scores from early on in the season, but by April 21st, I was updating the list as the games went on, and then one final one at the end of the night. So that was weird that I missed one from that late date. So I went right to the top, and started checking the Phillies' scores. I saw an 11, which was what (I thought) they needed to win. From April 21st! I checked the rest of their sked, and sure enough, they already had all 14 scores needed to win. The 10 they scored last Tuesday, May 5th, had clinched it for them. This contest has been over for five days.

I did a double-check of every other team, and found no more errors. The night of my mistakes was that night when the Sox were rained out, and played that crazy doubleheader the next day, with me not knowing what time to leave for game 2 since I had a ticket. The Mariners played on the coast, and the Phillies played a game with an hour-plus rain delay. I must have gone to bed before those games went final, and forgot to do that night's update the next day with all that rainy craziness.

Of course, the weird thing about the Phils winning is that Lee and Red Sox Diehard both picked the Rangers, and Lee offered to choose a different team, and picked the Phils. And now, Lee's the champ.

But second place is still up for grabs. The Royals are all alone, one 13-run game away from taking the silver medal for Boston Fan in Wichita.

Really nice day Saturday--only very slightly uncomfortable toward nightfall when the wind blew, but otherwise, gorgeous. Kinda humid even. Non-Sunday day games are the toughest, parking-wise. My mom and I planned to park at the Common garage and walk it. It was full, but we did find a free parking spot near there--Tow Zone 8-6, except Sat-Sun. Gold. Perfect day for a good walk. Here's some building from an alley.

The floor next to my 10-game plan seat, at the edge of the bleachers, with penny, and ubiquitous camera bag strap.

The view from "the seats."

The first game of the 10-game plan in April was also Lester-Kazmir, and again, we lost.

Not the best view of the "7" in the grass in center field for Dom DiMaggio, but I can see it.

I think it was my first time seeing us in first place on the board in person in 2009.

Rocco hit his first Red Sox HR, and the second in history by a Rhode Island native as a Boston player. My (new) state! Thanks to Joy of Sox for that stat.

It's weird, Kapler on Tampa, Rocco on the Sox. Both right in front of us in right field on this day.

What a crazy play in the first. Pedroia's rounding second on Papi's check-swing hit, and runs into a fielder. He assumes it's interference, and stops between second and third. But the play is still live. Crawford has the ball in shallow left, and tosses to second for what should be an easy out since Dustin is just standing in no-man's land, thinking the play's over. But he throws it over the guy's head! Dustin goes to third easily, and Papi hustles to second. Too bad we couldn't capitalize. (Also note the numbers on the vendors. On the Phillies game, I'm noticing they also have numbers, but theirs are in the Phillies' font. Probably also Aramark, since they're yellow shirts.) Soon the Devils were pounding the ball all over the place, and as early as the 7th, we were able to score field box seats.

George Kottaras at the plate. I went for the same view as the game before.

Iwamura in the box.

Not the best of linescores.

D. Pedroia and D. Navarro. Dustin's like, "yeah? you got somethin' to say? I have a bat, you know."

Jason Bay spitting while on deck. You may have to click to enlarge to see the spit.

David Ortiz takes a pitch.

Kapstein with his crazy new headset/hat combo as Drinkwater glares at me.

Manny Delcarmen mops up as workers watch from inside the board.

Mom and I went to Fenway and saw the bad kind of blowout. Almost got interesting there, but, we lose 14-5. At least, again, I got to catch some innings from good seats. A few pics to come later. Hughes got destroyed in Balty, and the Yanks lost in the same fashion, so we got that goin' for us. The Jays won, so we're a game back. Gotta win this TB series Sunday night.

The contest is heating up! I knew the Royals were in good shape, but could they catch the Phils, who have been one total away for a few days? Yes! The Royals were shut out tonight, so there's a tie for the top spot, with six teams tied for second, one total back.

So I need a tiebreaker, just in case two teams reach the holy goal on the same day. In that case, the winner will be the earliest team to do it--according to the time in the time zone their game is in. So the minute a team's game ends, we check the clock in whatever time zone they're currently playing in. First team to do it, under those rules, wins. (If two teams have a chance to win and are scheduled to play each other, I'll come up with a new tiebreaker beforehand, in case they both reach the goal in the same game against each other.) Also remember that if the Nats or Astros are within one of the goal when another team reaches it, the completion of their suspended game will still count, if necessary. Hey, does anyone know if there are any other suspended game right now? I feel like I would've noticed if there was one.